AMA: ThoughtSpot SVP, Revenue Strategy, Operations and Enablement, Kelley Jarrett on Revenue Ops Career Path

Knowing how to manipulate, share and wield data, tech and processes for efficiency gains is valuable in many functions outside of operations. While doing your 'day job' - keep your eyes open to where these skills play in your org. My revops role came later in my career (after many other functional roles), and I was a more valuable asset for having seen other parts of the organization, especially those we now partner closely with in RevOps. I have seen many sales enablement, solutions consulting and product professionals switch to revops and vice versa, as the skills built in those areas are highly transferable. The advice I give my team/mentees early in their careers is to give some thought to whether you want to be a 'generalist' or a 'specialist'. Generalists will take many lateral moves in their career, but will build cross functional knowledge and business acumen that will serve them well in high level leadership roles, offering more options mid and late career. Specialists will be your leaders who know the ropes, typically climb the ladder faster and serve as trainers, mentors and experts in their field. Neither is 'better' - it's all about what you want out of your career and what motivates you as a professional. Thinking through this now will get you on the path that will serve your chosen trajectory.

Just like all roles in a healthy, growing organization, you need to tie your work to one of three things: revenue, cost savings or efficiency. In a supporting role like RevOps, this may seem hard - but it's not as hard as it seems. Surfacing real problems in your org through data to your stakeholders will improve their efficiency and focus them on the right tasks that will allow them to see ways to drive revenue or reduce costs. Keep this circle in mind and quantify it - ensure you understand the impact, and align your team to actual, measurable targets (we use SMART goals at ThoughtSpot), and this will be a natural way of measuring your team's impact, allowing you to talk to leadership about promotions, raises and role expansions.

Moving from manager to director is a big step in operations. You have to think about things differently - managing existing workflows and people management is critically important, but the director level will introduce a new way of operating - essentially, you are directing growth, efficiency, team structure and change that your manager layer will execute. It will be important to think not only of your team (which is critically important) but also about the company health - how your org can better tie to the goals of the overall company objectives. To prepare for this switch, start talking to other Dir+ leaders about how they ensure they incorporate company metrics into their planning cycle and how they orient their functional directives to these bigger picture measures. In short, you're switching from status-quo management to visionary/growth leadership which requires a broader view of impact.

I organize my decisions using the following (very simple) framework. So far, it has guided me to work in some amazing environments for some incredible leaders and with high performing teams. Hope it helps you! Who - direct leadership is critically important to career growth and should be considered at every move. I always ask myself - what do I need from a leader in this role? Do I need them to be an expert b/c I am new to the function? Do I need them to be amazing at exec alignment and reporting up because that's a skill I need to work on? Do I need them to open doors in or outside of the org for me? Spend some time on this; it's a huge part of success in any role and something to consider to get the most out of a new role and your ability to be successful in a new environment. What - What is the role and how will it grow you professionally, personally and towards the role you want in 3-5 years? Title is not everything; consider where you're headed next and be honest with yourself about how this role will help you get there - title chasing is an easy trap to fall into. Where - The company itself is a huge decision. A lot of people make the mistake of choosing the role b/c its a title promotion, but what will the company do for your growth and career! Sometimes, taking a lower or lateral move at a bigger company because you've only worked in startups is a good way to round out your experience. Or, on the flipside, if you're used to the structure and clean hierarchy of a larger company, you may want to try your hand at a mid-size or startup to learn about pace, scale and growth. Why - Of the things above and other factors in your decision, it's important to land on your why - is it schedule flexibility? Better work/life balance? Working towards an event/IPO? Learning something new? Getting exposure to a new industry? Learning from an industry leader? Knowing your why will help guide you and prioritizie your options.

Rev Ops will continue to shift from reacting/responding/executing to proactively offering insights and training business users how to self-serve their data needs. it will about activating process and tech vs. doing all the work for your partners. AI tools will become critically important. Learn it, know it, use it. It may seem counterintuitive to a RevOps professional to put self service in the hands of business, but shifting mindset to the benefits - opening you and your teams up to perform more valuable and impactful work will set you up for success in this field.

I like to start my week with data, and I ask my team to do the same. Luckily with the rise in self service BI - and even more progress from companies like ThoughtSpot in AI for business intelligence - we're moving away from waiting for the business leaders to ask questions for us to answer - allow us to spend MORE time being business partners to our fellow leaders. Sitting with the data each Monday morning, I like to answer three questions: 1. What's going well? Which teams had a good week that deserves a shout out? Where should we dig deeper to replicate? 2. What needs attention? What leads may need to focus their time early in the week to solve a problem in their business/team? 3. Where are answers unclear? Where is the data showing anomolies or confusing insights? May suggest we need to ensure the data is correct or flag for further follow up. Once these questions are answered, next step is to communicate early and often - business leaders may have access to data, but they're not always looking. Share the above answers with them early in the week to help them prioritize their time and attention. The impact this will have on the efficiency of the business will surprise you! A positive parallel outcome is that you and your team are showing your value to the business, which is always a positive thing.

AI is changing everything. I would argue that prior to AI in business intelligence, self service really didn't exist. At least not in the way business leaders really need. AI brings the gift of natural language and automated insights to allow non technical and business leaders the ability to get real-time answers to questions in a conversational environment - before AI, dashboards had to be created and filters made...and if your leader asked for one small change, it would have to be rebuilt by your analyst team - this is called the data backlog. With AI entering the scene and allowing for follow up questions in conversational formats, it solves for the the data backlog - which, honestly changes everything. When business leaders need data, it's usually for an urgent need - a meeting, a decision, a concern - and by the time the backlog clears, the moment as passed.

This is such a great question; we're in a ruthless prioritization exercise with my team right now and forcing each other and ourselves to ask this question in all parts of our business. Beyond ensuring I had in place a strong AI for BI tool (like ThoughtSpot) - which is priority number 1, I would use (and am using) my limited time to activate our team to more effectively run revops functional tasks in the right place across NA, Europe and India to nail an async, global team working environment. Working to place the right tasks, projects and programs in the right spots geographically - where talent lies, where business partnership is needed real time vs. async - and leveraging global operations at scale would be a key focus. In Revops, more than half of our team is in India and they are really firing on all cylinders, focused on process operations, operational excellence, improving our more complicated processes and core system architecture and data health and integrity - the true backbone of our operations. This way, our NA/EMEA based business partners have what they need more quickly to help leaders manage their businesses; to bring insights to the table vs wasting in-office time with stakeholders on behind the scenes tasks.